Helen Cooper: “The Living and the Dead”

the ‘three living and the three dead’, the Dance of Death, and the Towneley play of Lazarus

The preoccupation with death in the premodern age often took the form of images, notably those of the Three Living and the Three Dead, the Dance of Death, and the cadaver tomb. This paper will look at some of the texts associated with each of those images, and also at a further text that relates to them in some unexpected ways: the play of the Raising of Lazarus in the Towneley Cycle.